I'd agree; old GG had a unique flavor of heroism that I feel is underrepresented in fantasy, while new GG is just a grumpy Tikki Tooki in many respects. He still needs work in any event because Enlightenment is effectively unattainable in its current form (and forget about it being worthwhile), and while immediately conversion is no longer necessary eventual conversion is still a forgone conclusion.

*Finally* beat a Vicious dungeon. Dragon Isles as Dwarf Rogue w. trisword (now less brokenly powerful, also had the extra altar, trans. scroll which I used for Amulet of Yendor for a level against the Firstborn), and GG -> Dracul conversion. Finished off the mother with 3 bloodswells, got the last one with absolutely the lastest tiniest bit of resources of any kind I had from desecrating Mystera. Was lucky to get the 4-items subdungeon which got me off GG at level 5ish.

Faaar from a perfect run and nothing on the monstrous runs some of the vets have been doing but I am inanely proud of this (days of losing with halfling trisworded berserkers) - seems to me like using the gods properly and the need to be at least a tad lucky is kind of the big difference between hard-level and Dragon Isles. Was stressed enough at the end of that that I had to go and bully Hobblers with a purist rogue to calm down.

Anyways, broader strategery:The GG -> Dracul switch seems pretty powerful to me (especially now the arrogance punishment's nerfed a bit) - truckload of bonus hp from absolution which you can replenish with blood swell and pools, grab absolution and humility or whatever it is then knock off the undead and snakes early (getting burnt offering if you can to counter arrogance punishments) to switch over and then there are a ton of ways to get piety with Dracul for 3 or 4 swells. May not be as doable in a map sans zombies and snakes but it's an interesting two-stage game style if you can make it happen. Also, given the new gold cap you both get around the GG's thematically weird but mechanically sensible no-floor-gold-but-buying-items-is-fine policy and a tighter health potion budget - suppose the only problem is that you will *invariably* be punished for health potion use unless you can get a timely desecration on Binlor or someone useless but Dracul gives you the health resources to make up for it *and* they restore your piety as you go.

First Naga City win - as a half-dragon (first try at the level) : ) Actually a really decent choice for this level just because your hulking 125-45% minimum knockback (I tend to prep the bear mace to double starting knockback, since you can usually get another threshold out of converting it if you need to) will hugely cut the number of hits you need to take from bosses, and you can deal both magical and physical damage without bringing Burndayraz, and you don't need to avoid resist-down bosses. Went Tikki Tooki (I think poison doesn't work with knockback, which is a shame, but still not a big enough problem) then Dracul for the health swells, and I had a couple of lifesteal things. I did luck out a bit in bringing the trisword and finding the Alchemist scroll but given I spent 50 piety on the usual poison trick which doesn't actually work for the half-dragon and I didn't really get any early piety farm god, I think it's definitely possible to do this without being so lucky. The fact you can definitely score a weytwut and instant convert out of JJ once you get down, so early Weytwut is nice but not needed. You can also prep JJ + compression if you want to without suffering too much, since you only really need weytwut as a glyph.

JJs pretty good but can be a bit annoying at low level where 1 damage here or there can really hit you. For a piety farm god I love prepping Binlor, his prep cost is basically nothing.

I'll mention my naga-city monk strat here, for posterity. Prep Binlor, grab Stone Form and Fist and clear the level out with Stone Hearts. That'll put you at about 30-35 magic resist. Get 100 piety and when you descend swap to Taurog, grab his helmet and armour if you want it, then convert to Dracul with consensus or desecration and grab another +15% resist from him. If you want you could also take a hit to max resist and get 1 lifesteal.

That puts you at either 65/75 magic resist/physical resist or 55/55 resist and 1 lifesteal.

Timothy will be the only boss to bother you, use knockback and hit other bosses into him then use a dodge and a reflex potion to finish him off.

Joist wrote:Nice, I'll have to try this. I don't play the half-dragon much.

JJs pretty good but can be a bit annoying at low level where 1 damage here or there can really hit you. For a piety farm god I love prepping Binlor, his prep cost is basically nothing.

I'll mention my naga-city monk strat here, for posterity. Prep Binlor, grab Stone Form and Fist and clear the level out with Stone Hearts. That'll put you at about 30-35 magic resist. Get 100 piety and when you descend swap to Taurog, grab his helmet and armour if you want it, then convert to Dracul with consensus or desecration and grab another +15% resist from him. If you want you could also take a hit to max resist and get 1 lifesteal.

That puts you at either 65/75 magic resist/physical resist or 55/55 resist and 1 lifesteal.

Timothy will be the only boss to bother you, use knockback and hit other bosses into him then use a dodge and a reflex potion to finish him off.

If resists are an issue prep the RBS.

Ooh, the binlor prep is actually pretty good call for the half-dragon, especially if you grab stone fist to make knock back even sillier, the JJ prep is essentially to guarantee a weytwut (though while you're there, you can probably get an extra +20% knockback), since that is a massive help for half-dragons (in that you can reliably hit things for double damage), but I agree it's a bit risky to start with - think I went with extra altar that run but didn't really get any helpful gods.